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UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE

Thursday, February 17, 2011

that while the Board of Trustees of the University of Toledo continues to recognize the three components of faculty workload--teaching, professional activity and service-- The University of Toledo faculty shall be assigned a 15 credit hour or equivalent teaching load per semester as part of their normal faculty workload.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED,

that The University of Toledo President or his designees shall have the authority to creat faculty workload standards and measurements that may serve to implement or offset the 15 credit hour or equivalent teaching load per semester.

Any reduction in teaching load will constitute a reassignment to engage in other tasks as part of his or her workload, such as research, outreach and/or engagment, approved service, etc., and such workload reduction will be proportionate to the reassignment.

Exceptions to and departures from the faculty workload standards and measurements created by the President or his deignees will require written approval from the President. Approval of excetions to and departures from the faculty workload standards and measurements that have been created by the President or his designees is a non delegable duty of the President.

I am going to make a few comments and then open the floor for discussion. First, no institution I am aware of that has a research component has a fifteen hour requirement. That equates to five three hour classes per semester. I did five three hour classes once. You spend all, let me repeat that, all your time teaching the class, coming and going to the class, preparing for the class or dealing with the students in the class. If I had wanted to that I would have taught junior high school. There is no time for writing or research or even committee activities. What is even more problematic is that there is little time to be creative in the classroom or to develope new classes. At a time when the administration is encouraging the development of new schools, new majors and at the very least a reworking of the curriculum you will have no time to do that. You will be just too busy teaching what is right in front of you to think about anything else. Second, no young scholars will consider taking such a position. It would be occupational suicide. There will not be enough time to write anything and as a result he/she will never receive tenure and have no record of scholarship that will enable them to go elsewhere. Third, there will be favoratism toward particular individuals, particular departments and particular programs. What better way for administrators to take out their displeasure at those who have disagreed with their policies than to have them teaching fifteen hours a week. Let's face it, those that receive outside funding will get release time. The rest of us will not. Fourth, those departments who tend to attract those students who are least prepared will have the least amount of time to personally help those students. We will all be in class. I suggest we create a new college. I even have a name for it: The Community and Technical College.

UTodayBoard committee OKs police contract extension, asks for faculty workload discussion With a difficult budget cycle ongoing statewide for fiscal year 2012, University of Toledo trustees discussed several items designed to help plan for providing services with reduced funding. During a Feb. 14 Academic and Student Affairs Committee meeting, UT officials announced they had reached a tentative one-year contract extension with the UT Police Patrolman’s Association (UTPPA), pending board approval; were exploring the outsourcing of Food and Nutrition Services and the gift shop at UT Medical Center; and asked that the administration and faculty begin a conversation considering increasing faculty workload from 12 to 15 credit hours or equivalent per semester. The agreement with UTPPA, now extended through Dec. 31, 2012, calls for a 0 percent wage increase, eight furlough hours, and a one-time retirement cash incentive if notice is submitted by March 31. Additionally, members have an increased off-campus prescription co-payment, which is an effort to encourage usage of the UT Pharmacy and reduce the University’s prescription coverage costs. The extension was approved by a 27-1 vote of the union membership.

At a recent meeting of the WAC (writing across the curriculum) committee of the Council formerly known as Arts and Sciences, there was a short discussion of the concept of communication across the curriculum or CAC. Just so the discussion does not wander too far down the road before we get a word in, here is what the National Communication Association has stated about such programs: (1996)

Resolved, That Communication Across the Curriculum programs should not be approved as substitutes for basic communication instruction provided by the discipline.

Resolved, That Communication Across the Curriculum courses are endorsed as useful extensions of and supplements to courses taught in departments of communication.

Resolved, That courses in Communication Across the Curriculum programs should be developed in close consultation with the communication faculty on the campus, and with ourside consultants as needed. These cross-disciplinary efforts must be acknowledged with resources, administrative support and recognition of faculty effort.

This is terrific news in and of itself--congratulations to Jeff and to his adviser, Dr. Nemeth! And I personally am also pleased to see some attention given to someone in a field other than totally STEM(M) or sports. We of the former A&S--whatever college we're in now--should think about tooting our own horn a bit more. (No one else will do it for us!) We have a lot to be pleased with and proud of that the rest of UT should hear about. I don't know how things are chosen for the UToday, but maybe someone out there does.

And now to my second post-within-a-post: Last week, while I was home sick, I read the book In the Pond by Ha Jin. It's quite an interesting--and fairly quick--read about corruption. Worth a look at least.

Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010

Daily Koan

Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?

Swamp Bubble

Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?

How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)

How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?

How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?

COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:

"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."

"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot

A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.

Comment of the Week

"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."

Comment of the Week of August 13

Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:

Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.

Comment of the Era

Wow! Ain't that something.

-Anonymous

Comment of the Week

Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."

Comments to HLC

Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Comment of the Week!

Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!

TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .

Bloggie is always glad to consider submissions to this blog. If you have something that you wish posted please send it to:

ascbloggie@gmail.com

Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member

A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.

I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.

It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.

Nemeth Does it Again

Nemeth's New Article in Collegian

The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.

UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat

See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.

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Recent Letters from The Blade

Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing

Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."

As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?

Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.

When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.

As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.

In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.

President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.

Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.

Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.

However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?

It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.

Am I missing something here?

WALTER W. OLSON,

Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing

Engineering,

University of Toledo

It's the same old, same old at UT

I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.

His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?

All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.

SANDY FLICK

Rose Acres Drive

UT also has checks, balances

In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.

This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.

A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.

The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.

LINDA M. ROUILLARD,

Associate Professor

of French,

University of Toledo

Quote of the Year (so far)

The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:

. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees.

President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . .

A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions."

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